


I Must Have Done Something Right

by weyfarere



Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5 and 1 things, Because of Reasons, Clint's history is from the 616 verse, Edith Barton is a good mom, M/M, but then I merge it with movie verse, some other characters make minor appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weyfarere/pseuds/weyfarere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Edith Barton protected her son, and one time she didn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Must Have Done Something Right

**Author's Note:**

> This story is kind of told from the perspective of a dead character. So, uh, if that bothers you, move along.

1.

Edith Barton made a lot of mistakes in her life.  She was the first to admit that marrying Harold Barton might have been her biggest.  In her defense, she was nineteen, pregnant, and terrified.  Harold promised to marry her, to make them a real family.  She ignored that voice in the back of her mind that told her to run and instead she said, “I do.”  

 

Their life was never idyllic.  While Edith loved Barney with her whole heart, she knew from a young age that he had too much of his father in him, too much anger at the world for the circumstances of his life.  And while she could only admit it in her darkest moments, a tiny part of her resented him.  Barney was the reason she had tied her life to Harold’s, and she absolutely hated herself for that resentment -- even more because she wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it.

 

Then, Edith had Clinton.  If Edith made a lot of mistakes in life, Clint was not one of them.  He owned her, heart and soul, from the moment his murky blue eyes met hers and his tiny, helpless fingers wrapped around one of her own.  She knew that he was everything that was good about her, and she vowed to do everything in her power to protect him.

 

She taught Barney it was his job to protect his little brother.  She fostered Clint’s sweet, tender nature when she knew it wouldn’t bring Harold’s wrath, and she comforted him as best she could when it did.

 

With each passing year she knew she was failing Clint.  She watched his innocence begin to slip away.  But every night she was able, she snuck into his room, brushed his dirty blond hair off his forehead and prayed to a god she didn’t believe in to keep him safe.

 

The night that Harold came home in a drunken rage, determined to drive Clint back to the family’s butcher shop to clean up some mess he’d supposedly made, Edith knew she couldn’t let him go.  She begged and pleaded with her husband, couldn’t stop him from knocking Clint around, but convinced him to take her to the shop instead.  As the car careened uncontrollably off the road, the one thought at the front of her mind was that she had kept her promise to keep Clint safe.

 

2.

The orphanage was never what Edith would have wished for her boys, but neither was their home when she’d been alive. 

 

Afterlife, apparently, was no life at all, but she dwelt in the presence of her sons.  Felt, abstractly, their joy, their despair, their hope.

 

She also felt Barney slowly slip further and further away from her, but the very essence of her soul felt tied to Clint.  Like a string that anchored them to each other.

 

It was a gift, she knew, an intangible way for her to carry out her only living wish.  She watched, aching to comfort him when he felt lonely or sick or afraid.  She felt the walls he began to construct around his heart when the other children rejected him, or when the caretakers were too busy to offer a kind word or loving touch.

 

Edith did her best to breathe life into those love-starved pieces of him, and she couldn’t regret his growing, insatiable need to love and be loved.  His capacity for love was (despite its current neglect), after all, the only worthy legacy she left him.

 

When she sensed Barney’s decision to run, taking Clint with him, she used the last vestiges of her connection to him to lead him to the circus.  It was no better than the orphanage, but kinder to children than the streets would have been.  The moment when her sons set foot on the midway, garnering the wary attention of Carson, she felt the last traces of Barney leave her, despairing her inability to save him from himself.  But Clint, Clint was going to be okay; despite the darkness she felt lurking in his future.

 

3.

Jacques Duquesne was not a good man.  His presence descended on Clint like a dark cloud and Edith pushed and pulled and wove his presence into skills that could protect her son, could make him stronger.

 

She held tightly to the core of Clint’s goodness, refusing to let it tarnish despite the cruelty Clint’s life seemed determined to drown it in.  His pride in his abilities grew into confidence, and his tender spirit gave him conviction.  His friendships were few, but hard fought, and Edith felt a peace in him when he spent time with the circus’ fortuneteller, Sylvia.

 

The woman was maternal -- a balm to the chasm left behind by Edith’s death and Edith welcomed it.

 

If she had a heart to beat, Edith was sure it would have clear stopped as she watched Clint fall from the high wire.  She knew his unwavering sense of right and wrong would land him on the wrong side of the swordsman’s wrath.  When the man hurled the sword that would cause her son to drop to the unforgiving ground below she railed against her lack of physical being.  With everything she had she called to the fortuneteller, beat against the woman’s subconscious until she was compelled to find Clint. 

 

Sylvia woke in a cold sweat with that unerring sense that something was wrong.  “Clint,” she whispered, unbidden as she grabbed the nearest pair of shoes and ran out of her tent.  Her feet took her to the big top, where she found Clint crumpled on the ground, pulse thready, but present.

 

He was broken, yes, but he was alive and Sylvia held him, protecting him in Edith’s stead.

 

4.

Clint’s mercenary days were dark.  Edith would have spent those days weeping if she were able.  It felt like a never-ending battle to salvage his goodness.  Never before had she felt such despair filling him, reaching into the broken parts of him and leeching away his hope.  It threatened to cross the realms that separated them and eviscerate whatever it was that bound them.

 

Edith could feel Clint’s desperation escalate.  She was failing him again, unable to provide him any solution to his troubles.  She threw her otherworldly being into seeking out something or someone to anchor him.

 

Clint had taken a job that went against every moral code he’d attempted to repress, and she could feel his internal struggle as he had the target in his sights.  This was a good man he’d been asked to kill, a man who found himself on the wrong side of a political coup, but did not deserve to die. 

 

Edith saw an opportunity and took it; she willed Clint to hesitate, to drop his scope from its perfect, deadly aim.

 

In that moment, Clint was shot in the leg.  He dropped and his physical pain reverberated through his mother’s spirit, but it was nothing compared to the overwhelming wash of relief she experienced when a discreet man in a suit stepped into her son’s line of sight.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” Clint gasped.

 

“I’m Phil Coulson.” The man extended a hand.  “I have an offer you’re going to want to take.”

 

Edith never considered herself Clint’s guardian angel, she’d failed him in too many ways for that to be possible, but this man, she thought, he would do the job nicely.

 

 

5.

If Edith had a body, she was sure it would be freezing cold.  Her son, her beautiful, loving, hopeful son was a shell, a tomb for the sliver of his spirit that was left over when everything else was usurped by a demon.

 

His name was Loki and he called himself a god, but everything about him was dark and twisted and vengeful.

 

Edith felt like she was in a tug-of-war, a battle of wills, her son’s spirit the prize.  She could feel Loki’s words, his goals, whispering and licking like flames at the essence of Clint’s being.  But her son was strong, and so was she, and she spoke to that little part of Clint that was waging war against being taken hostage.  She willed him to be resilient, to remember who he was and what he stood for.  She watched in prideful horror when he missed fatal shots at those he’d come to love.

 

There were moments, Clint’s weakest moments, when she felt Loki’s presence sharply, like he was speaking to her himself, bragging about his ability to destroy her son.  But Edith was a mother, she gave her life for Clint, and a spiteful little trickster couldn’t sever that connection, much as he might wish to.

 

Edith fought and she pulled and she tugged until it felt like she had Clint wrapped in her arms, hugging him tight in that corner of his mind that still belonged to him.  She clung and she clung until Phil or Natasha or Jasper or _someone_ came for him because they had to.  They had to.  As long as she believed that, he would be okay, so she clung, and Natasha came.

 

 

+1

When Clint was born, Edith spent a lot of time daydreaming about his life.  Wondering if he would make it out of Waverly, maybe go to college.  She wondered what kind of job he would have and if he’d ever get married.  She always assumed she’d have to nurse a few broken hearts with the way he wore his own on his sleeve, even as a kid.

 

The life she’d imagined was not the life he’d gotten.  In the end, though, she thinks he got everything she ever wanted for him.

 

“Do you want to hear something weird?” Clint asked.

 

Phil raised an eyebrow.  “You mean weirder than having pieces of your heart regrown by literal magic or a space portal opening over Manhattan?”

 

Clint rolled his eyes.  “Okay, maybe not that weird, but still weird.”

 

Phil turned on his side, propping himself on his elbow and tracing a mindless pattern over Clint’s bare stomach with his free hand.  “Tell me.”

 

“You know how I remember everything?”  It said something about their relationship that Clint didn’t have to specify beyond that.

 

“Mmm,” Phil confirmed.

 

“Well, I kind of have two sets of memories.”

 

Phil looked mildly confused, but didn’t comment, knowing Clint would continue at his own pace.  The days since recovering their lives from Loki had largely been spent this way, sharing their feelings in bits and pieces, stops and starts.

 

“I mean, I remember everything Loki asked me to do, executing plans, and everything, but I also remember fighting him.”

 

“Fighting him?”

 

“Yeah, I mean, not physically, but it was like the real me was tucked in a corner somewhere, like being held hostage and doing all the things we’re trained to do to keep ourselves going.”

 

“That makes sense.  Selvig mentioned a similar thing.”

 

“Yeah, it’s why he built in a way to destroy it, I remember, but that’s not the weird part.”

 

“O-kay.”

 

“My, uh, my mom was with me?”

 

“Is that a question?”

 

“No.  My mom was with me.  She talked to me.”  Clint mirrored Phil’s position on his side, tangling their fingers together when Phil’s hand slid from his stomach to the bed.  Phil smiled at him, small but genuine, the kind of smile that Clint lived for.  “Do you think that’s possible?”

 

“Yes, I think that’s possible.”  Phil gave Clint’s hand a small squeeze.  “What did she say to you?”

 

Clint eyed the mattress, feeling strangely silly about looking Phil in the eyes.  “She told me to be strong, that I had to keep fighting.  It was, I don’t have a lot of memories of my mom, but I remember her comforting me.  She would always tell me I was strong, smart, that my dad couldn’t reach those parts of me.”  He looked up, needing to know if Phil was laughing at him, while at the same time knowing he wouldn’t.  “It was like that again.  And I think, I think she was waiting.  Waiting for you or Natasha or someone to save me.”

 

“I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”

 

Clint poked him on the forehead.  “You should be.  You should have been saving me instead of being dumb.  She told me that, too.”

 

Phil rolled his eyes, willing to follow Clint’s lead to lighten the subject.  “She did not.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“Because mothers love me.”

 

Clint grinned.  “Of course they do, your extensive arrest record from your wild youth is very endearing.”

 

“That’s classified.”

 

“Nothing is classified from Tony Stark.”

 

“I hate him.”

 

“No one believes that anymore, babe.”

 

Phil dropped his head to his pillow.  “Let me live in my delusion.”

 

“Mmhmm.” Clint cupped the back of Phil’s head, pulling him in for a chaste kiss.  It became a series of not-so-chaste kisses, but Clint pulled back before it could go anywhere.  “I do think she would have loved you,” he said seriously.

 

“Why do you think that?”

 

“Because you saved me.  A long time ago.” 

 

Phil rolled onto his back, pulling Clint with him.  Clint settled against his chest relishing every moment he was able to do this with this man. 

 

“I love you.”  Phil said matter-of-factly.

 

“I know, she’d have loved you for that, too.”

 

And she did.


End file.
